[REVIEW] LAST CASE: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMANDA KANE

Today I had the pleasure of playing an indie game by the name of “LAST CASE – THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMANDA KANE.” The game is a very short (5 -10 minutes) point-and-click adventure about a private eye (Jack Forester) attempting to locate a rich man’s runaway daughter by the name of Amanda Kane.

The game has a brilliant sense of style that really helps to encapsulate its blatant noir theme. The game does this in multiple ways, the most obvious of which is through its unique, voxel-based graphical style.

Muted tones, limited light sources, a small yet detailed isometric area over a black background: this describes the vast majority of the game’s locales, several of which have the aforementioned noir atmosphere in spades. From the protagonist’s small, dingy office to seedy bars and alleyways, LAST CASE definitely has its fair share of typical film noir haunts.

Gameplay is a simple affair, that essentially boils down to clicking on the correct object to further the story. This simple gameplay works in the game’s favour, however; these basic tasks make it even easier to soak in the game’s moody atmosphere as you progress through the story.
As the player interacts with the game world all of their actions produce narrative text which wraps itself around the game area and describes what is currently happening (which somehow manages to make the game even more visually appealing). This is aided by the game’s vocal narration; the slightly melancholic vocal tones of the narrator help to give the impression that the main character feels somewhat jaded by the events of the world around him. The use of a third-party (the narrator) to deliver this information to the player gives the game an almost novel-like feel especially with its interesting use of text.

The game also makes very effective use of music with a superb soundtrack that sets the mood of each location well. Unusually the game has little in the way of sound effects, opting instead to denote sound through the use of more text; for example instead of making a ringing noise a telephone will instead produce little “ring, ring” captions to make the player aware of what is happening. These captions initially seem like a strange design choice but they suit the game well, ensuring that the atmosphere that has been so expertly created by the soundtrack remains uninterrupted.

As previously mentioned, LAST CASE – THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMANDA KANE is a very short game but its fantastic style, incredible atmosphere and unusual twist ending definitely left me wanting to play more. Here’s hoping that developer Affinity Play chooses to add more to this intriguing project.

LAST CASE: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMANDA KANE is RECOMMENDED

LAST CASE – THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMANDA KANE is available to play for free at Game Jolt